April 13, 2009

Obamunism III - Biden His Time

For our third example of almost jaw-dropping childishness from the Childe President -- or this time, the Vice Childe -- we have the pathetic maunderings of Vice President Joe Biden (can anyone read that phrase without wincing?) Now (according to Fox News' excellent Bill Sammon) he has taken to recounting how he bravely spoke truth to power, bearded President Bush in his den, and became the life-preserver to which George W. Bush clung, while Biden lectured him repeatedly... always getting the better of the exchange:

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden began, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"

The exchange is purely "fictional," said [Karl] Rove, who was Bush's top political adviser in the White House.

Such narcissistic fantasizing for personal aggrandizement is commonplace among children, as anybody who has a child (or has ever been a child) knows: Two gradeschoolers have a tussle during recess; and by the time school ends, each has spun a narrative of epic battle à la Beowulf vs. Grendel -- a grand guignol in which his opposite number was so thoroughly vanquished that he will have to leave school and become a professional bum or journalist.

It's a bit disconcerting, however, to see such serial exaggeration come from the VPOTUS. Can anyone imagine Dick Cheney telling a fairy-tale about the day he scored such a bullseye with a cutting remark to Vice President Algore that the latter dropped into an egg-huddled mass, crying for his mommy?

Rove was equally appalled by Biden's claims of having given Bush his comeuppance.

"If you notice, all of these incidents have the same structure: Joe Biden courageously raises the impudent question; the president befuddles the answer; and Joe Biden drives home the dramatic response."

Notice again one of the hallmarks of childishness: Actual history is rewritten to make it more dramatic, with a plotline, climax, and denouement. The courageous senator-hero confronts and takes down the president-ogre; at the end, the villain is reduced practically to tears while the world cheers Zero the Hero.

But the fantasization runs even deeper, according to Rove; and judging from what I've read from other top presidential aides to this and many other presidents (including Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon), even the idea that a single senator would have the kind of access that Biden claims is inherently implausible.

People simply do not have that much face-time with the president, not unless they are top aides whose job entails such extensive contact. Among other problems, the primary job of the president's chief of staff -- the very able Andrew Card until 2006, followed by the equally competent Josh Bolten -- is to serve as a gate-keeper, preventing imbeciles from monopolizing the president's valuable and extremely limited time. There is no way that either Card or Bolten would permit Biden to ramble on and on, lecturing Bush and triumphing over him again and again.

But to hear (read) Biden tell it, George Bush becomes his imaginary friend... the one who plays foil to Biden's sense of snowjob. Here is the long version of a tale told by a Biden:

[Chief of Staff Card, press secretary Ari Fleischer, and legislative liaison Candida Wolff] also disputed a similar assertion made by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues at a lunch that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.

"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"

"Joe Biden was never alone with the president for more than few moments," Rove said. "There was staff in the room the whole time."

In fact, I doubt that even Vice President Dick Cheney or senior aide Karl Rove got "a lot of hours alone" with Bush; as even Biden admits, any meeting between Bush and Biden would include a lot of presidential staffers. So there should be plenty of witnesses to be interrogated, right?

[Biden spokesman Jay] Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.

Sammon does not neglect to note Joe Biden's history of embellishment, exaggeration, fabrication, and outright theft of intellectual property in his disgraceful thirty-six years in the Senate, and now three months at Blair House:

Last July, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq. When questioned by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled by saying: "I was near where a shot landed...."

In September, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."

"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.

This is, without doubt, the weirdest ticket ever to occupy the White House. But the most worrisome factor is not the liberal-fascist variety of Socialism, the military fecklessness, the mindblowing deficits, the serial lying, the cryptofascist antisemitic appointees, the boorishness of his contacts with foreign leaders, or even the veil of secrecy that shrouds his every decision (much moreso than George W. Bush)... it's the appalling way that everybody involved with this administration, with the possible exception of the Secretaries of State and Defense, sees the world through the eyes of a child -- and a particularly immature and poorly raised one, at that.

It's a shocking turn of events when the lone Democratic exemplar of sanity, honesty, and maturity in the White House is Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 13, 2009, at the time of 11:41 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this hissing: http://biglizards.net/mt3.36/earendiltrack.cgi/3578

» Taming the Beast from Big Lizards
The Washington Times -- still one of the very few national newspapers not worshipping at the shrine of the Obamacle -- reports on the "taming" of the White House press mob since You-Know-Who moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave: The White... [Read More]

Tracked on May 5, 2009 6:59 PM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: Geoman

"And then...and then...I punched him in the face. And then he was all...like crying...and stuff. And then....then... his mom had to pick him up from school. And I woulda punched her too...also..."

Hope and change. We got change. But anyone ever explore the idea that hope, boundless hope, is often a symptom of hopeless naivete? It seems to be in this case.

Vice Presidenting am hard.

On a side note - I saw Queen Noor on the Colbert Report last night, stumping for a reduction in nuclear weapons. Mostly that the west should have fewer of them. And all I could think was....I don't give a fig if the U.S., or Britain, or France, or Japan, or Germany, has 1 or 50 million nuclear weapons, but I do care if Iran has just one. Just like I don't care if the police and responsible civilians have plenty of guns, as long as the criminals don't. Somehow that point seemed lost on her.

Idiotic equivalency. Another symptom of childlike behavior. You took my toy, so I get to punch you in the face. Mommy said no, so I will scream and cry and throw a fit. We are afraid of Iran's nukes, so the U.S. must give up their weapons.

The above hissed in response by: Geoman at April 14, 2009 12:14 PM

The following hissed in response by: Geoman

Here is the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which is a recognized psych disorder:

1) Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (lots of time with Bush)
2) Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love (Gets to tell Bush off)
3) Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions) (Bush doesn't get it)
4) Requires excessive admiration (needs to talk about this imaginary incident)
5) Has a sense of entitlement (no comment necessary)
6) Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends. (even if the story were true, he's using it for his own ends)
7) Lacks empathy.
8) Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
9) Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

Biden's telling of this story certainly suggests most of these criteria.

The above hissed in response by: Geoman at April 16, 2009 4:31 PM

Post a comment

Thanks for hissing in,
.
Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)

(If you haven't hissed a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Hang loose; don't shed your skin!)

Powerhouses

Milblogs

Bear Flag League

The Bear Flag League blogroll will resume when BFL switches from BlogRolling to some other link-management site that does not trigger "malware" security alerts. We apologize for the inconvenience, but, well, you know.